Prologue

I wish I had read this a lot sooner -- this text is basically The Answer when it comes to hot topics like, "is this really what marx meant?" "would there be marxism without the specific class antagonisms of 19th - 21st century capitalism?" "is X philosopher technically a Marxist?"

This book was written as a collection of essays, published in the early 60s.

Reading Notes and Summary of FOR MARX (1965) by LOUIS ALTHUSSER (1918-1990) by ACDTRUX

Preface to the English Edition

Althusser claims that "humanist" philosophers, contemporary soviet marxists, and social democrats focus on Marx's early works and ignore the epistemological break. "Indeed, in conformity with the tradition constantly reiterated by the classics of Marxism, we may claim that Marx established a new science: the science of the history of 'social formations'. To be more precise, I should say that Marx 'opened up' for scientific knowledge a new 'continent', that of history."

Introduction

There were no foundational marxists scholars from France in the same way that Marx and Engels were German, Luxembourg Polish, and Lenin Russian etc. This is likely because proletarian philosophers come from the intellectual aspects of the working class movement, which does not apply to France since the bourgeois classes had been revolutionary during the same time period. Thus, there have hitherto been few proletarian French sholars.

Marx's writings themselves were only a small aspect of a critical philosophy of the science of history; the task of marxists now is to continue this project.

Althusser proposees the following classification of Marx's works:

  • 1840-44 : the Early Works
  • 1845 : the Works of the Break.
  • 1845-57: the Transitional Works.
  • 1857-83 : the Mature Works.

Althusser wants to investigate the genesis of marxism through marx's life, but this itself is an application of marxism; thus, he concludes with an ovservation about Marxist philosophy: "We set out in search of it. And here it begins to emerge, along with its own first, most elementary demand: the demand for a simple definition of the preconditions of this search."

FeuerBach's 'Philosophical Manifestos'

Early Marx was really a FeuerBachian, so to understand Marx we should read FeuerBach as well.

On the Young Marx: Theoretical Questions

Many Marxists unforunately read Marx's whole philosophy through the lens only of his early works.

"To discomfit those who set up against Marx his own youth, the opposite position is resolutely taken up: Marx is reconciled with his youth -- Capital is no longer read as On the Jewish Question, On the Jewish Question is read as Capital"

As critics read Marx's early writings, they can (hopefully) separate the idealist from the materialist aspects. But, the question now becomes, how do these aspects synthesize dialectically into a whole? And how does this produce Marx's later philosophy? Many readers approach this incorrectly in a Hegelian sense.

We should be materialists when confronting these issues:

"the sense of the development of a particular ideology depends not on the relation of this develĀ­opment to its origins or its end, considered as its truth, but to the relation found within this development between the mutations of the particular ideology and the mutations in the ideological field and the social problems and relations that sustain it."

Talking about the history of Marx's thought presupposes a correct form of Marxism proper. But this is okay, since the question "what is the materialist history of a particular ideology" is the essesnce of marxism anyway, and we just happen to be applying marxism to Marx himself.

A text is unified around a particular problematic it chooses. In other words a philosophical work is organized around the question it answers. A consequence is that the question is now what is important, but defining the question is also itself an answer.

This is why authors before Marx who spoke of the "class struggle" were not themselves already Marxists.

Understanding an ideology involves studying it's "ideolgogical field" (makes me think of the term "discursive regime") as well as its problematic.

Contradiction and Overdetermination

The well-known "materialist inversion of Hegel by Marx" is somewhat of a misnomer; Marx did not really achieve this, and were one to do so, it would look more like FeuerBach.

Marx writes that Hegel's dialectical system is mystical, which is opposed to Marx's own, which is rational. Althusser reads closely the famous quote from Capital: "With (Hegel) it (the dialectic) is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell."

It cannot be the case that the materialist dialectic is simply residing within the shell of Hegel's idealist dialectics. Rather, Marx's dialectic is systematically different: "This means that basic structures of the Hegelian dialectic such as negation, the negation of the negation, the identity of opposites, 'supersession', the transformation of quantity into quality, contradiction, etc., have for Marx a structure different from the structure they have for Hegel." (p. 93-94).

Mao's On Contradiction is an "un-Hegelain" (Althusser) description of the Marxist dialectic.

Example of materialist dialectical political theory: Lenin's writings about the "weakest link" -- e.g. the Russian revolution was successful because it was the weakest proletarianized state after the imperialist world war.

In the well-known base / superstructure distinction, Engels doesn't claim that the superstructure never acts onto the base: rather, the specific claim is that the economic base is always the motor of history in the last determination. We never observe something "in the last determination" in reality.

The 'Piccolo Teatro': Bertolazzi and Brecht

Melodramas are bourgeois. A play should not simply offer the audience identification with the hero and display various antagonisms aginst this hero; rather, a play should allow the audience to identfy with the dialectic of the play. The goal of theatre is therefore also the progression of the consciousness of the audience; "the play is really the production of a new spectator" (p. 151). Brecht achieves this.

The 1844 Manuscripts of Marx

These were the first works of Marxism proper.

"it is possible to be 'Communist' without being 'Marxist'. This distinction is essential if we are to avoid the political trap of confusing Marx's theoretical positions with his political positions, and justifying the former from the latter." (p. 160)

On the Materialist Dialectic

"By practice in general I shall mean any process of transformation of a determinate given raw material into a determinate product, a transformation effected by a determinate human labour, using determinate means (of 'production')." (p. 166)

Theory is also a form of practice. All science succeds an ideological, pre-scientific form akin to the epistemological break of Marxism. Thus, Theory can be scientific but also pre-scientific and ideological.

In a post-epistemological break scientific field, "I shall call theory any theoretical practice of a sCientific character. I shall call 'theory' the determinate theoretical system of a real science (its basic concepts in their more or less contradictory unity at a given time)" (p. 168).

Marx never wrote a Theory about his own theoretical practice -- i.e. Marx never wrote a Dialectics to explain the philosophy of Capital (he planned to). Lenin and Engels observe that the theory here is contained in a close reading of Capital.

Extended example: Fruit. Hegel's idealist dialecitcs has us conclude that particular fruits exist on account of the idea of Fruit in general. To "invert" this, we might conclude that the materialist dialectic proceeds as particular fruits give rise to the general idea of Fruit. This is not correct because there will be an existing (ideological, pre-scientific) abstract idea of Fruit. "The act of abstraction whereby the pure essence is extracted from concrete individuals is an ideological myth." (p. 191)

However, is the ideological abstract idea of fruit also generated through this dialectic? No, the existing idea is produced through various social processes.

Hegelian dialectic includes the initial abstract starting point, which is eliminated but preserved. Marxism does not preserve the "root origin" throughtout the dialectic although it does grasp it in its givenness.

Marxism is not "monist."

When we mention that things come down to the material circumstances, this is not a reduction to empiricism; rather, we are analyzing the social totality by looking at a particular situation.

Marxist dialectics allow us to analyze the principal contradiction, which is not present for Hegel.

An overdetermined situation refers to "the relation of this situation in fact to this situation in principle, that is, the very relation which makes of this situation in fact a 'variation' of the - 'invariant' - structure" (p. 209).

Marxism and Humanism

Socialism = to each according to their labour and communism = to each according to their need.

Written in 1965, proletarian class humanism has given way to socialist humanism for people in general, as the USSR becomes entirely socialist.

Marx had two phases of humanism before 1845: first, it was based on the notion of freedom and reason -- freedom and rationality is the essence of man and the expression of the State should be accordance with this character. The second phase of humanism (1842 - 1845) observes a split between man: man as civil man and as citizen. The reappropriation of the essence of man is not merely political (under the State) but communist.

One way Marx broke with this is "the definition of humanism as an ideology" (p. 227). Marx's "problematic" thus changed.

"Men 'live' their ideologies ... not at all as a form of consciousness, but as an object of their ' world' - as their 'world' itself." (p. 233).

"Ideology, then, is the expression of the relation between men and their 'world'" (p. 233) -- this is very similar to the definition he gives in the Ideological State Apparatuses essay, as ideology = imaginary relationship to the productive forces.

"Human societies secrete ideology ... Only an ideological world outlook could have imagined societies without ideology." So will there be ideology in a classless society? Yes. "In a classless society ideology is the relay whereby, and the element in which, the relation between men and their conditions of existence is lived to the profit of all men." (p. 236)

Lukacs' theory of "reification depends on a projection of the theory of alienation found in the early texts" (p. 230n; also 221n)

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Pub: 18 Nov 2020 08:22 UTC
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